Page:The Geranium.pdf/161

75 she'd dress him off and wring his goddam neck like a goddam chicken. The laughing cut his side and he tried to hold it in but every time he thought of his goddam neck, he shook again. He lay back on the ground, red and weak with laughter, not able not to think of her’ smacking his goddam head in. He said the words over and over to himself and after a while he stopped laughing. He said them again bubs the laughing had gone out. He said them again but it wouldn't start back up. All that chasing for nothing, he thought again. He might as well go home. What did he want to be sitting around here for? He felt suddenly like he would if people had been laughing at him. Aw, go to hell, he told then. He got up and kicked his foot sharply into somebody's leg and said, "take that, sucker," and turned into the woods to take the short trail home.

And as soon as he got in the door, they would holler, "How did you tear your clothes and where did you get that knot on your forehead?" He was going to say he fell in a hole. What difference would it make? Yeah, God, what difference would it make?

He almost stopped. He had never heard himself think that tone before. He wondered should he take the thought back. He guessed it was pretty bad; but heck, it was the way he felt. He couldn't help feeling that way. Heck...hell, it was the way he felt. He guessed he